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John Taylor, convicted in the 2000 massacre of five employees at a Queens Wendy’s, waits alone on death row.

Today, New York’s highest court is scheduled to hear his appeal. Taylor, 43, is seeking to be resentenced to life without parole, arguing he should not be executed, and citing the court’s 2004 ruling that held a provision of the state death-penalty law was unconstitutional.

Since the 2004 ruling, the other prisoners who were on death row have been resentenced to lesser terms, meaning Taylor remains the sole prisoner in the Unit for Condemned Persons at the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate Dannemora.

In May 2000, Taylor and an accomplice marched seven workers into the basement of a Wendy’s in Flushing, bound them and shot each in the head. Two survived.

A provision in the 1995 New York Death Penalty Law required judges to instruct jurors that if they deadlocked, the court would sentence the defendant to a parole-eligible life term.

At Taylor’s trial in 2002, his defense lawyers asked the judge to declare the law unconstitutional, arguing the instruction might persuade a juror to vote for death out of fear that the defendant would be released on parole.

The argument eventually led to the statute’s demise in the court’s 4-3 ruling.

Kevin Doyle, Taylor’s lawyer, said flatly, “The death penalty in New York is over.”